“On the other hand the bad man triumphs and rejoices at present; but what follows? His prosperity either shrivels him into miserableness, or melts him into luxury; the former of which impoverishes, and the latter diseases him: for if the former be the effect of his prosperity, it increases his needs, because before he needed only what he had not, but now he needs both what he hath not, and what he hath, his covetous desires treating him as the falconer doth his hawk, luring him off from what he hath seized to fly at new game, and never permitting him to prey upon his own quarry: and if the latter be the effect of his prosperity, that is if it melts him into luxury it thereby wastes his health to be sure, and commonly his estate too, and so whereas it found him poor and well, it leaves him poor and diseased, and only took him up from the plough, and sets him down at the hospital. In general while he is possessed of it, it only bloats and swells him, makes him proud and insolent, griping and oppressive; pampers and enrages his lust, stretches out his desires into insatiable bulimy, sticks his mind full of cares, and his conscience of guiles, and by all those woeful effects it inflames his reckoning with God, and treasures up wrath for him against the day of wrath: so that comparing the consequences of the good man's adversity, with those of the bad man's prosperity, it is evident that the former fares well even in his worst condition, and the latter ill in his best. ‘It is well for me,’ saith David, ‘that I was afflicted, for before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept thy commandments.’ But on the contrary, when the wicked spring as the grass, saith the same author, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, then it is that they shall be destroyed for ever! If then in the consequents of things, good men are blessed in their afflictions and bad men plagued in their prosperities, as it is apparent they generally are, these unequal distributions are so far from being an argument against Providence, that they are a glorious instance of it. For wherein could the divine Providence better express its justice and wisdom together, than by benefiting the good, and punishing the bad by such cross and unprobable methods?” INTERCHAPTER XVII. A POPULAR LAY NOTICED, WITH SUNDRY REMARKS PERTINENT THERETO, SUGGESTED THEREBY, OR DEDUCED THEREFROM. Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit: by and by it will strike. TEMPEST.